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The Clubs of the Irish Confederation

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The Clubs of the Irish Confederation Popular mobilisation and the rising of 1848: the clubs of the Irish Confederation GARY OWENS In the twelve months leading up to the Young Ireland rising in late July 1848, nationalists in cities, towns, and villages across the country established more than 200 organisations known as confederate clubs. At their peak, these groups boasted a combined membership of more than 40,000 people, all of whom were, in the words of one of their leaders, joined in a common enterprise: 'to destroy the English interest in this country root and branch, to institute a national government and, by our laws and arms, to restore the country in its full integrity and glory to its own brave people'.' Ireland had not heard political rhetoric of this kind or witnessed political mobilisation along these lines since the 1790s. Like the United Irishmen and the Defenders of a half-century earlier, the confederate clubs aimed to mobilise a broad section of the population and to achieve self-government for Ireland through phys-- ical force if necessary. But unlike their eighteenth century counterparts, the con- federate clubs have not stirred the interests of many historians. As far as I at-n aware, only one writer - the Japanese scholar Takashi Koseki - has studied the clubs in any detail and he has focused on the Dublin organisations.' Others who have dis- cussed the clubs in passing have under-estimated their size and over-emphasised their urban character, resulting in an imperfect image of their basic structure. One recent survey claims, for example, that 'at their widest extent the clubs never num- bered more than about seventy', that total membership barely exceeded 20,000, that they were concentrated mainly in Dublin, and that 'organisation in the coun- tryside, not surprisingly, was virtually non-existent'.3 In reality as we shall see, the number of clubs was more than three times this estimate, membership was well in excess of 40,000, and by the eve of the rising at least three-quarters of the clubs were located, not in the capital, but in the country at large. Our relative ignorance of the confederate club movement reflects a general tendency among historians over the past hundred and fifty years to view the background of the Young Ireland rising from the perspective of its Dublin-based x Thomas Francis Meagher, 'The Clubs and the Council', Nation, 8 July 1848. 2 Takashi Koseki, D:.,blin Coofederate Clubs and the Repeal Movement. Hosei University Ireland-Japan Papers, No. io (Tokyo, 1992). William Nolan discusses aspects of club activities in a single county in 'The Irish Confederation in County Tipperary in 5848' in Tipperary Historical Journal, 1998, pp. 2-i8. 3 James S. Donnelly jr,'A Famine in Irish Politics', inWE.Vaughan (ed.),A New History of Ireland. T'IjeIand under the Union, 1(1801-70), (Oxford, t989), P. 368. 51 52 Gary Owens leaders and to ignore the mobilisation taking place among ordinary Irish people outside the capital. The clubs offer ways of seeing the events of 1848 unfold from another vantage point - that of rank and file nationalists. Before exploring the rea- sons why tens of thousands of people became drawn into these organisations in the space of a few months, it would be worthwhile to understand how the clubs originated and how they grew and changed over time. The rift that developed between the so-called Young Ireland and Old Ireland groups in the mid-1840s became a formal split in January 1847 when the Young Irelanders established a new organisation called the Irish Confederation. Like the O'Connellite Repeal Association from which it sprang, the Confederation was a centralised body controlled by a large Dublin-based council.4 Within a few months of its creation, however, the Confederation began to reconstruct itself along new lines. In lace July 5847, its leaders announced plans to broaden the base of the organisation by. forming branch societies in Dublin and provincial towns. These local clubs were intended to provide ordinary members of the Confederation with a variety of useful activities that would make them direct participants in national affairs. Above all, they were literally meant to be schools for their members and the public at large. Their meeting rooms were to be stocked with an array of nation- alist books and newspapers; they were to sponsor fortnightly lectures on Irish his- tory, literature, and economic development; and they were to hold regular formal classes in these subjects, replete with examinations and prizes for the top students. As their proponents saw it, by establishing a vast network of such bodies across Ireland, they could create. an organisation more vibrant and more potent than the ossified Repeal Association. Charles Gavan Duffy of the Nation, who was the most vociferous promoter of this new venture, was convinced that clubs would breathe fresh life into the nationalist movement. Unlike the centralised Repeal Association, which ultimately marched to the commands of a single leader, the new locally- rooted Confederation would be 'founded on the liberty of individual and local opinion, [and] shall careftilly substitute silent, progressive work, for clamour and idleness'.5 Thomas D'Arcy McGee, another champion of the clubs, elaborated on this theme, suggesting 'that instead of one centre of agitation, Ireland should have a thousand - that instead of one committee we should have many - that instead of 4 The most comprehensive histories of the Confederation can be found in Richard Davis, TlieYo,.,n Ireland Mor'ei,,ent (Dublin, 1987); and Denis Gwynn, Young Ireland and 1848 (Cork, 1949). See also Richard Barrett. History of the Irish Confederation (Dublin, 1849).The surviving manuscript records of the Confederation are in the possession of the Royal Irish Academy: MSS. a, H.40.-4 and 62-3. 5 Nation, 28 Aug. 1848. See also Gavan Duffy's The Use and Capacity of confederate Clubs: A Lecture Delivered at the Dr Doyle Confederate Club, Dublin (Dublin, 1847). Popular mobilisation and the rising 011848 53 having public opinion under the absolute dictatorship of a Dublin meeting or a Dublin majority; we should have a political union of several free and independent agencies' Such worthy goals were more easily prodaimed than achieved. By January 1848 - nearly six months after their creation - only a handful of clubs were operating in Dublin and barely a dozen others existed in the country at large.7 Total mem- bership stood at less than 2,000 and the likelihood of expanding much beyond that number was not great.8 The experiences of the Cork club were probably typical: after an initial recruitment campaign that saw 200 young men attracted to the organisation in a few weeks, the numbers slowed to a trickle.9 In Kilkenny, mem- bership drives aroused the hostility of local O'Connellites who demonstrated noisily outside club meeting halls, smashed their windows, and threatened those gathered inside.'0 In other places, famine conditions dampened recruitment efforts. 'We have not done much for the Confederation', lamented the secretary of the Galway club in early 1848, 'but that entirely results from dreadful local privations and the difficulties consequent on the famine, Once out of that pass', he bravely predicted,'we will go on rapidly'." These first clubs also lacked a clear political focus. A few of them sponsored lectures upon such diverse topics as Irish ballad poetry, the industrial resources of Ireland, the history of paper-making in the south of Ireland, and something enti- tled 'self-culture'. Dublin clubs conducted weekly classes in mathematics, book- keeping, industrial knowledge, English grammar, and ancient Irish history. One organisation boasted that it had set a few silk-weavers to work in its neighbour- hood producing green and orange cravats, while club members in Ballina, County Mayo, conducted a survey to determine the value of English-made goods being sold in their town with an eye toward promoting Irish manufactures.'2 But such activities, however worthy, were not what some Young Irelanders had in mind. As John Mitchel put it in a speech before his own club in the autumn of 1847,'[1 do] not approve of making these Clubs mere reading-rooms or mechan- ics' institutes . their great. object and study . should be to rid the island of English rule - how we should re-conquer this country from England'. 3 Mitchel's remarks reflected the radical turn that his thinking had taken over the previous year as well as his growing impatience with his moderate colleagues on the Confederation council such as Gavan Duffy and William Smith O'Brien. Whereas they remained wedded to the traditional O'Connellite strategy of seek- ing self-government for Ireland through constitutional means and in alliance with landlords, Mitchel and his followers stressed the need to prepare for armed 6 Irish Felon, r5 July 1848. 7 Clubs were established in Cork, Waterford, Cappoquin, Ballina (Co. Mayo), Galway, Limerick, Kilkenny, Ardfert (Co. Kerry), Belfast, Derry, Newty, and Drogheda. There were six clubs in Dublin. 8 Reports on dub activities, Nation, i and 22 January 1848. 9 Ibid., 22 January 1848. to Ibid., 2 October 1847. II Ibid., 12 February 1848. Ia Reports of activities in individual clubs appeared regularly in the Nation in 1847 and 1848. 13 Report of the Swift Club, Nation, 2 October 1847. 54 Gary Owens confrontation and to broaden the social base of the Confederation to include more of the labouring poor. Because they were badly outnumbered on the governing council, the Mitchelites turned increasingly to local clubs for support, hoping to use those bod- ies as levers to shift the nationalist movement onto a more radical course.
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